By their deeds ye shall know them. Government’s public health priorities evince some unhealthy allegiances.
by Kieron McFadden
That government has become, to its shame, an appendage of the big corporations and is nowhere better evinced than the betrayal of the citizenry by those bureaucracies that purport to be safeguarding our health.
Nothing is done, for instance, about the pandemic of drug deaths resulting from prescriptions drugs. If a pandemic alert can be declared and the government galvanized to some sort of action, however batty, and great consternation and prophesies of doom leap out at us from the front pages of newspapers over Swine Flu for example, then why not the same level of concern over the deaths caused by prescription drugs?
As of November 17th, Swine Flu had claimed just over 8,000 lives worldwide, while over the previous 300 days, death by prescription drugs claimed nearly 49,000 lives - that is Six times as many deaths from prescription drugs as from the Swine Flu virus.
So, why the wailing and gnashing of teeth over Swine Flu on the part of the dangerously inept entities that presume to rule our lives, while prescription drug deaths raise apparently little concern, even though they expunged Six Times as many human beings in the past year?
Worse, Swine Flu is - or so we are told - an act of nature. It will run its course and die out. The prescription drug epidemic, on the other hand, is entirely man made; it is caused by the decisions, choices and actions of men. And it will be with us from hereon out, claiming lives by the tens of thousands relentlessly into the far future unless men do something about it. Natural calamities, it would seem, pale to insignificance, compared with the devastation we can visit upon ourselves. Actually, I should say compared with the devastation that can be inflicted by a few men upon the rest of us.
Robert DuPont, former White House drug czar and former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse said, "The biggest and fastest-growing part of America's drug problem is prescription drug abuse. The statistics are unmistakable."
USA Today reports that about 120,000 Americans end up in hospital after overdosing on just on opioid painkillers each year, and prescription drugs in general cause most of the more than 26,000 fatal overdoses annually.
You would think that such a death toll would galvanize the powers that be to action wouldn’t you?
I don’t know about you, but if were in charge of the government and I became aware of this pandemic of drugging that is killing far more of my fellow human beings even than swine flu year in and year out and that, at the same time, the health of the nation is getting weaker and "depression" and so forth, are so much on the rise that even our armed forces are committing suicide faster than the enemy can kill them, I’d want to know what the heck is going on and who is responsible for this mayhem - and I would darn sure do everything in my power to stop it.
I would certainly not be trying to defend the purveyors of death nor make excuses for them nor deflect criticism from them. Neither, would I be willing to mobilize the forces of the state so as to protect this status quo, I don’t care whose profits are at stake.
But that’s just me, naïve soul that I am: I forget sometimes that there is hardly a government on the planet, so-called democracy or otherwise, that did not grow out of the determination of one vested interest group or another to protect and advance itself and that Presidents, Prime Ministers and political parties also have a hidden senior echelon to whom they must answer.
Okay, so obviously some modern calamities elicit concern and action of some kind, however badly thought through. Other calamities, though worse, do not stir the powers that be out of their torpor.
Clearly then, some calamities are considered bad while other mass killers are considered acceptable, even though they claim more lives.
Who decides such things and on what criteria?
Well, the profits of big corporations would appear to be one of the criteria and whoever it is our governments work for, they do not work for the good of all the people.
Until they do, they do not deserve and indeed must not be given our support.
Nothing is done, for instance, about the pandemic of drug deaths resulting from prescriptions drugs. If a pandemic alert can be declared and the government galvanized to some sort of action, however batty, and great consternation and prophesies of doom leap out at us from the front pages of newspapers over Swine Flu for example, then why not the same level of concern over the deaths caused by prescription drugs?
As of November 17th, Swine Flu had claimed just over 8,000 lives worldwide, while over the previous 300 days, death by prescription drugs claimed nearly 49,000 lives - that is Six times as many deaths from prescription drugs as from the Swine Flu virus.
So, why the wailing and gnashing of teeth over Swine Flu on the part of the dangerously inept entities that presume to rule our lives, while prescription drug deaths raise apparently little concern, even though they expunged Six Times as many human beings in the past year?
Worse, Swine Flu is - or so we are told - an act of nature. It will run its course and die out. The prescription drug epidemic, on the other hand, is entirely man made; it is caused by the decisions, choices and actions of men. And it will be with us from hereon out, claiming lives by the tens of thousands relentlessly into the far future unless men do something about it. Natural calamities, it would seem, pale to insignificance, compared with the devastation we can visit upon ourselves. Actually, I should say compared with the devastation that can be inflicted by a few men upon the rest of us.
Robert DuPont, former White House drug czar and former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse said, "The biggest and fastest-growing part of America's drug problem is prescription drug abuse. The statistics are unmistakable."
USA Today reports that about 120,000 Americans end up in hospital after overdosing on just on opioid painkillers each year, and prescription drugs in general cause most of the more than 26,000 fatal overdoses annually.
You would think that such a death toll would galvanize the powers that be to action wouldn’t you?
I don’t know about you, but if were in charge of the government and I became aware of this pandemic of drugging that is killing far more of my fellow human beings even than swine flu year in and year out and that, at the same time, the health of the nation is getting weaker and "depression" and so forth, are so much on the rise that even our armed forces are committing suicide faster than the enemy can kill them, I’d want to know what the heck is going on and who is responsible for this mayhem - and I would darn sure do everything in my power to stop it.
I would certainly not be trying to defend the purveyors of death nor make excuses for them nor deflect criticism from them. Neither, would I be willing to mobilize the forces of the state so as to protect this status quo, I don’t care whose profits are at stake.
But that’s just me, naïve soul that I am: I forget sometimes that there is hardly a government on the planet, so-called democracy or otherwise, that did not grow out of the determination of one vested interest group or another to protect and advance itself and that Presidents, Prime Ministers and political parties also have a hidden senior echelon to whom they must answer.
Okay, so obviously some modern calamities elicit concern and action of some kind, however badly thought through. Other calamities, though worse, do not stir the powers that be out of their torpor.
Clearly then, some calamities are considered bad while other mass killers are considered acceptable, even though they claim more lives.
Who decides such things and on what criteria?
Well, the profits of big corporations would appear to be one of the criteria and whoever it is our governments work for, they do not work for the good of all the people.
Until they do, they do not deserve and indeed must not be given our support.
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